IOTA - Claims and Reclaims: Finalization

Background

During
an attack on the IOTA network in October, some funds were found to be
at risk of theft, due to users re-using their private keys. The IOTA
team took the decision to protect IOTA token holders by taking those
funds which were at risk into temporary custody through a snapshot.

Once
the attack was stopped, the team worked on setting up a process for
reclaiming the funds, and sending them back to the rightful owners. This
process of receiving and validating the claims has been understandably
complicated and sensitive — especially when taking into account the
immutability of the IOTA distributed ledger. This effort has required
the full attention of the entire core and legal teams of IOTA over the
last few weeks. We are pleased to announce that we have finally come to
the final step: sending out the reclaimed funds.

Sending back the Funds

As
some community members have already noticed, we have already started
sending out some of the claims (beginning with smaller ones) in batches.
We will continue to do so over the course of the first week of January
and aim to have all claims successfully processed by January 10th.
Because this is a manual process, involving several validation and
verification steps, we have limited the size of each batch to 30 claims.

Once
all claims have been successfully processed, we will publish the list
of claims with a full audit trail (an intrinsic component of the
validation process), for the public to verify. We will also provide
additional instructions for users that have not yet claimed their funds,
on how they will be able to do so.

How do I know if my funds have been received?

The fastest solution, is it to simply check your address at one of the Tangle explorers (https://thetangle.org, https://iotasear.ch),
or via the API (for those more technically-minded, with the getBalance
API call). You can also log in to your GUI wallet and check if you have
received a transaction, your balance should simply show up in your
account.

Important: KYC for Multiple Claims

Several
funds have been claimed multiple times (requested to be sent to
different addresses). Considering that these could represent malicious
attempts to steal funds from the rightful owners, the IOTA Foundation
will be processing these claims only after having KYC’ed the claimants.

Because
of this risk, the users of the following addresses should reach out to
the IOTA Foundation at [email protected], in order to get their claims
processed. Simply send us an email, with the address(es) that are owned
by you, and we’ll then guide you through the process.

Closing Remarks

We
understand that users were frustrated due to the prolonged process of
regaining access to their funds, and we sincerely apologize for the
delays. At IOTA, our priority is it to ensure that user funds are
protected at all costs. We want IOTA to be a protocol that can be used
with confidence, to transfer and store value. Because of this, we have
taken this extraordinary step of taking user funds into custody during
the attack.

We
perceive that such steps may be necessary, especially during the growth
stage of IOTA, and other crypto-currencies. All the best, and very much
looking forward to an even better year 2018.